Cursed Eyes
by ia3
Summary: Itachicentric. The story of why the Uchiha clan had to die. ON HOLD.
1. Chapter 1: The Calm before the Storm

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Otherwise, Sasuke would be dead, and Naruto x Sakura would have already happened, ages ago.

Chapter 1: The Calm before the Storm

Black hair tousled by the wind, he closed his eyes as he mentally prepared himself before pulling six kunai from his holster. _Sharingan!_ He thought inwardly,and as he opened them, his obsidian irises turned red. Now, he was ready.

Leaping into the air, he released the kunai one by one, pleased to hear the _thunks _that told him they had hit the target. This last one would be difficult tho, as it was in his blind spot, behind a boulder. Concentrating, he threw one kunai towards the rock with his right hand, then released the other with his left, deflecting the first onto the target, and the second onto another target positioned on a tree trunk. Though outwardly he displayed no emotion, inwardly, he was rather pleased with himself. It was only the third time in four tries that he'd been able to achieve the feat of hitting all six targets on the bullseye since his father had told him about this place where all Uchihas trained their bloodline limit and shuriken techniques.

He had collected the kunais, ready to try again when something stirred in his peripheral vision, and he only just managed to somersault into the air, avoiding the kunai that had been aimed at his back, while releasing all six kunai that had been in his hands, aiming for the weakest points of the enemy's body-head, neck, heart and both knees. Without his sharingan, he knew, he would have been killed. As he landed, he pulled more shuriken out of his back pouch, standard issue for all ninjas, ready to defend himself if the shurikens had missed. Anyone who had the guts to attack an ANBU captain, even one at his tender age of 13, would be either crazy, suicidal, or strong enough to be confident in matching even his strength. What came next though, even he did not predict.

"Hahahahaha(A/N: picture the creepy laugh), as expected of you, Uchiha Itachi-_sama_," Orochimaru laughed, but Itachi could tell he was being condescending when he'd applied the honorific to his name. The snake man creeped him out, even then, he was known as one of the Sannin, the three strongest ninja in Konoha, and though he thought he might be able to match up to either one of them in terms of battle strength, Itachi really did not want to fight them.

Once he managed to suppress that slight apprehension though, Itachi realised he was livid inside. This snake freak had just attacked him from behind, and trespassed on Uchiha land, and now, he was mocking him! As those thoughts flashed through his mind, he struggled to compose himself.

Coldly, he said, "What do you want from me, Orochimaru-san, and what are you doing here?" he forced himself to add the honorific, if anything, because that freak was older than him.

"I was merely testing you. You see, I'm conducting some..experiments, and I was wondering if you would like to help me with it," Orochimaru replied, barely missing a beat at the killing intent Itachi was now radiating.

"No. Whatever it is, unless you've come from the Hokage, no," Itachi said, noticing that Orochimaru's false smile had slipped and was bordering on a grimace, "and I have to get back to training, you're in the way."

Orochimaru was furious. How DARE that brat dismiss him! How DARE he refuse him, one of the great Sannin! Well, he smirked to himself, it would just have to be done the hard way then, though he'd very much preferred not to have to fight Itachi, wanting him in as perfect a condition as possible, Orochimaru knew he had to retreat, for now. Controlling his facial expressions once again to show that twisted smile that he'd practiced so often, to fool that stupid old geezer, he said, "Very well. But you must come and see these tests sometime Itachi_-sama_," he spat the honorific again. It riled him so that he would have to call that brat "-sama" because of his position in the ANBU. It riled him even more that as the village's "genius", Itachi had replaced him, and was even given the exception of not having to wear a mask even though he was ANBU.

Watching the retreating back of the snake Sannin, Itachi couldn't help but feel suspicious. Something was underfoot, and he knew that snake would be behind it. Trying again, he found that he was too distracted to hit all six targets, having missed the one in his blind spot for the second time today. Something told him all was not right. He collected his kunais and decided that he would pay that snake freak a visit, in secret, to find out what his "experiments" were all about.

A/N: Phew, first chapter of Naruto fanfic, EVER. Also, I apologise if the timeline's a little messed. I'll admit, I didn't do much research before writing this, though I'm pretty sure Itachi and Orochi were in Konoha together, at the same time. Anyways, thank you for reading, please review! I'd like to know how my first fanfic is received ) Thank you!


	2. Chapter 2: Into the Realm of the Snake

Disclaimer: If i owned Naruto, i wouldn't be writing this, I'd be telling Kishimoto to hurry his ass up and finish the fillers!

Thank you for the single review, dashdashypenspace! I'm hoping for more reviews on this one, good or bad, bring it on. I'd just like to know what you honestly think.

Chapter 2: Into the Realm of the Snake

Crouching, Itachi carefully shuffles forward, into the unknown darkness of one of Konoha's many underground piping systems. Molding chakra to his feet, he walks upside down, hanging from the roof of the huge pipe to cause as little noise as possible, avoiding that noisy splish-splash when walking on water, as any sound made in this tunnel would be amplified so many times, even the faintest of footfalls would be audible. In this darkness, it was also necessary for him to keep his sharingan activated, for a false step could prove fatal. After all, if this place was what he thought it was, there would be no warm welcomes for him, should he get caught.

As quietly as possible, Itachi utilised all his skill from all the years of Academy training, combined with the stealth required for his ANBU missions in order to remain undetected. It was starting to become a huge drain on his chakra, having to use it in his feet, his eyes and to mask his presence, all at the same time, and after walking, no, creeping for at least half an hour, he began to wonder if he'd missed a turning or if the man ahead of him, that snake freak, was just leading him on a wild goose chase.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost didn't notice the groove embedded in the roof and only having his sharingan activated saved him from possibly alerting Orochimaru of his presence. Mentally, he chided himself for being so careless, and resolved to be more careful from then on. It seems that snake freak really did plan for all eventualities, laying traps even for someone who was walking on the ceilings. However, the simple presence of the trap reassured the black haired prodigy that he was indeed, still on the right track. After all, why would any normal pipe have traps in them? Although Konoha was a ninja country, their enemies were not likely to attack through the piping systems. After all, they would have to get through two of his best ANBU members to even get into the piping system-members that HE had stationed to patrol the piping systems' entrances and exits.

Finally, the man he was trailing took a right turn into one of the more obscure branches of the piping system. The ANBU captain hung back, knowing from experience that turns and bends were ideal places for traps to be sprung, or to ambush anyone who might be following you. As a matter of precaution, he used a kunai to reflect whatever little light there was in the pipings, forming a quick, temporary mirror for him to look around the corner. Surprisingly, he saw that the end of the tunnel was lit up. Cautiously, he jumped across the breadth of the pipe, landing on the underside of the pipe opposite his prior position to get a better view.

He saw Orochimaru facing a passageway with a dead end. What now? Had he been discovered? Slowly, he crouched back into the shadows of the pipe, further concealing himself. Orochimaru, on the other hand, showed no signs of having noticed him. He proceeded to touch something on the surface of the passageway, revealing the door of a room perpendicular to the end of the tunnel.

Watching Orochimaru walk into the room, Itachi considered his options. He could rush in ahead of his target, and lock the door, but that would be a rash thing to do. He could try slipping in together right behind Orochimaru, but that was risky as well, for he did not know the full measure of the snake Sannin's abilities and his movements could be caught. He thought of genjutsu, but a ninja like Orochimaru would know that he had been under a genjutsu, even if he would still be fooled by it, the after effects of any genjutsu he used would most definitely identify him, the culprit, as a sharingan user.

Sighing inwardly, he knew the only option he had left was to wait out that freak. Sooner or later, he would have to leave the room, and then, Itachi would sneak in. He was glad he'd refused his brother when he asked for help with shuriken practice that morning. It could get rather complicated if he'd failed to turn up, what with his mother coddling Sasuke, and his father, always expecting him to be perfect.

--A few hours pass--

_Argh, snake freak, come on out already! Don't you have to go oppose Hokage-sama at some council meeting today?! _

Itachi was getting impatient. Even ANBU missions seldom took this long, or were this nerve wrecking. Usually, it was, get in, complete mission, then get out. Even when he'd had to watch suspects, they wouldn't normally take this long to act out of turn, allowing him to complete his mission.

As if hearing his thoughts, the door opened and Orochimaru stepped out, with a delirious expression on his face. His laughter rang through the entire piping system, and his voice sounded unnatural. It wasn't the leering voice he always used when speaking to Itachi, nor the mocking tone he put on when he spoke to the Yondaime-it was more..evil.

None of this bothered Itachi though. He'd always known that snake bastard was a freak, and it had just been proven to him. Besides, he had seen many freaks on those crazy ANBU missions both the Sandaime and Yondaime liked to send him on. But this was a chance not to be missed. He had to find out what sorts of "experiments" that crazy little man carried out in such seclusion, and what could have made him so delirious?

Itachi waited a minute after he had left, deciding that even were Orochimaru to come back, he would be inside within half a minute, and if he had to find a place to hide, he would. Quickly but silently, he made his way to the panel he had seen Orochimaru touch before the door opened. As a precaution, he performed a henge and turned himself into Orochimaru, in case the locking device had any sort of visual recognition features.

It turned out to be an unnecessary precaution. The door revealed itself once he had touched the panel, and slid open easily enough when he gently pushed it aside. Remembering to look out for traps, he stepped inside and looked around. There were bottles of substances cluttering the room, with many books occupying the shelves he had set up there, and scrolls lying open, littering the floor. He randomly picked a book from the shelf, carefully making sure not to damage it or leave any prints.

He flipped the pages. There were pictures of handseals he had never seen, information about lands far away, clans he'd never heard of, and jutsu he'd never seen or heard of. Putting it back, he picked up a scroll. Kinjutsu, he read on..bloodline limits..and then..more kinjutsu. _"That freak is treading a very thin line here. He seems to be studying kinjutsu, of all things!"_. He replaced the book, and decided to check on Orochimaru's more recent works.

Walking to the table that had the most clutter, he assumed that was Orochimaru's working table, and studied the scrolls on the table, touching them as little as possible. What he saw was disturbing to say the least. There were diagrams of people being extracted, then reinstated into other people, drawings of sealing circles, and, upon closer inspection, drawings of an eye that looked something like a sharingan, but one that he'd never seen before.

Feeling disturbed, Itachi opened the drawers of the desks, as slowly and as quietly as he could. In the first drawer, there were nothing but Orochimaru's hand scribbled notes, taken from his academy days. It seems he had always been a good artist, drawing the handseals all academy students learn to perfection. Second drawer, he found notes on the human anatomy. Somehow, Orochimaru had persuaded Tsunade-hime, his teammate, to teach him something of what she knew about medical ninjutsu, despite the fact that she despised him and was jealous that he was getting most of the Sandaime's attention from the time that they had been genin. His pushed that drawer shut, as his hand reached for the third drawer.

He stopped for a moment, and he was filled by a sense of foreboding, as if the drawer itself was emanating an aura of some horrible curse. Steeling himself, Itachi pulled open the drawer, no longer bothering to be subtle or quiet. What he saw in there made him sick to the stomach.

He, Uchiha Itachi, who had seen at least a hundred deaths, in more than a hundred different, gory ways, almost threw up at what he had found. Suddenly, he realised what Orochimaru was after. This was the reason why that bastard had been so ecstatic that it verged on the brink of insanity, and this was the reason he had to get home..now!

A/N: Can you guess what he saw? Honestly, I am going somewhere with this. It's a kinda story I wrote based on a theory that I have regarding the Mangekyou, Itachi, and the Uchiha massacre. Also, once again, I'm not 100 sure whether Itachi left Konoha first, or Orochimaru left first. So, if there are discrepancies on the timeline and you have info on it, please lemme know. As usual, thank you for reading, please leave me a review! )


	3. Chapter 3:This Feeling

**Chapter 3: This Feeling..**

"_Shit,"_ Itachi thought, _"How'd he get it?!"_

He had tucked the cannister from the drawer under his vest and raced out of the laboratory, using as much speed as he could muster. His thoughts were in disarray, for the first time since his brother had been born. Then, he'd only worried about his position in the clan and his standing in his parents' eyes, but this was different, more serious than that by at least a hundredfold. His father needed to know about this, as clan head, and as an Uchiha. Orochimaru having a sharingan eye sample was bad enough, but those research charts on his desk made the matter all the more disturbing.

He could have implanted the eye into himself, like that current so called genius copy-nin Kakashi had done. Itachi thought he was disrespecting the Uchiha family, receiving an eye from a fallen comrade, and parading it around in battle, ungoverned by the rules of the Uchiha, but that was a matter for another day. There were more pressing matters at hand. That snake freak had to have obtained the sharingan from an Uchiha, any of whom would rather die than give up their precious bloodline limit willingly. Which meant that murder had been committed, and worse than that-treason! The charts on Orochimaru's desk were littered with hints of _kinjutsu_. There were pictures of undead summonings, sacrifices and soul siphoning. The young genius did not know what to make of them, but they disturbed him nonetheless.

He felt as though he was missing something, a link between the sharingan eye in the cannister bulging against the fabric of his vest, the drawings on that snake freak's table, and what he had said to him during their earlier encounter. He tried to organise what he had seen, to make sense of the puzzle by first collecting all the pieces like they had taught him during his prior training with the ANBU, but just this once, the puzzle wouldn't click for him. Every time he felt like he was close to grasping something, it was gone. That niggling feeling was so tangible that he'd forgotten the first rule as a ninja, _"The first rule a shinobi must follow, is to always be aware of his surroundings. You were given these eyes to surpass all others at this.."_, as his father had told him a long time ago when he'd gotten the first _tomoe_ of his sharingan. He failed to realise a presence that had been following him in the shadows.

_Swish _Itachi twisted as he saw two shurikens soar past him, narrowly missing his head and vitals. For the second time today, he thanked God he was an Uchiha with the sharingan. Preoccupied in his thoughts as he had been, any other shinobi would have been dead, pierced once in the jugular and again in the heart, through the gaps of the jounin vest. Instinctively, he landed atop one of the tree branches in the dense forest that he had been travelling through. Having processed all the trajectory angles, he'd deduced two things. Whoever threw that had known that he would be able to dodge them, and whoever it was, their shuriken skills were at least as good as himself, as he could detect no presence, and the shurikens had seemed to come from different directions, meaning the user had been fast, and using shuriken deflection techniques, or he had been using _**Kage Bunshin**. _Intently, the dark haired Uchiha scanned the terrain, looking up, down, left and right frantically, searching for the person who had thrown those shurikens at him, but obviously not meant to kill him. It had been a very long time since he had been challenged this way. Even on S-ranked ANBU missions, most of his enemies then had been far too easy for the Uchiha prodigy to dispatch, barely breaking a sweat, although being only 13, and strangely, although he felt fear for his life, his heart was racing in way that it had never done before, and it was not from fear. He could not quite put his finger on it, but he knew that much, he wanted to meet such a worthy opponent and defeat them, by any means necessary.

"Ku ku ku.._"_ That familiar voice rang in his ears as it resonated through the dense canopy of the forest,

"Itachi-kun, what are you doing out in the jungle at a time like this? It could be very dangerous for someone as important as yourself to be caught here...ALONE". Suddenly, the tree exploded from behind him, and Itachi threw himself onto his belly, barely avoiding the snakes that had materialised and were hovering in the air, but an inch from his head. Having no time to contemplate Orochimaru's motives, he rolled forward and leaped onto an opposite tree branch, wanting to get a better look at what exactly that snake bastard was going to throw at him. As soon as he landed however, he had to jump again to another branch in order to avoid a punch that Orochimaru had thrown at him, using the extended length of his snake encircled arm.

"_Shit, what the hell IS this freak?!" _was all that ran through Itachi's mind as he dodged incessantly, jumping from tree to tree, struggling to come up with a battle plan, an idea, something that would enable him to counter the attack, for he knew that if he kept this up, he would eventually lose energy and although the sharingan enabled him to see movements well before they happened, his body would not have enough energy to dodge the attack, and he had a feeling that if he got hit, the outcome would not be rosy for him. Stealing glances from time to time, he tried to sum up his surroundings, searching for something that he could use to his advantage, some tree to hide behind, some weapon to throw at him, for some help even, for Itachi knew he was overmatched, at least for now, since he had used up a lot of his chakra climbing the walls and running at high speeds.

Dodging right, he chanced a look down. Two bodies lay on the ground at the entrance of the tunnel. "_The ANBU!" _the realisation hit him as he saw their katanas shattered and broken, scattered on the floor beside their bodies. "_Shit!" _In his haste to report to his father, he had not told the ANBU to stop standing guard, and they had paid for it with their lives. Most likely, they would not have even seen or sensed the snake freak coming up to them, and had tried to put up a fight once they realised he had been attacking them.

Suddenly, a strange feeling rose inside Itachi. He had been their captain, their leader, and now, they were dead, and it was all because he was selfish enough to forget about them in his haste. The quiet, black haired boy he once was was washed away from him in that instant, and that feeling continued building up within the confines of his 13 year old body, so strong and uncontainable that it seemed to want to burst from within him. He could not explain it, could not quantify it as he had been able to with his other feelings, but most importantly, it was getting increasingly difficult for him to confine it. However, he found that he could harness it. Use those feelings as energy, as fuel to his body, mind and spirit, and in harnessing it, he knew, he would not lose here.

Transformed, he radiated a bloodlust that even Orochimaru seemed to sense, as he hesitated for a moment, giving Itachi the split second he needed. Almost automatically, even though he had had no plan before that, Itachi reached into his ninja pouch and pulled out shurikens. With a cry of "DIE!", he flung a handful of them at Orochimaru, with only half intended to hit the target, as the other half flew past almost half a metre above the snake sannin.

To avoid the barrage that had been thrown at him, the pale man jumped upwards, managing to avoid all the shurikens that had been thrown at his jump level as well. "My my, Itachi-kun, you sure are underestimating me, using such basic Academy level tactics against me," he said. Itachi only smirked, as the snake Sannin's eyes widened in surprise, feeling himself being restrained by ninja wires and backed up against the thick trunk of a tree.

"**_Sofushasan no Tachi!!(Manipulating Windmill, Triple Blades!!)" _**

Itachi only smirked and walked up to Orochimaru with a kunai in his hand, careful not to get too close. He'd heard about the snake freak's inhuman abilities to extend parts of his body, and he, Uchiha Itachi did not intend to lose a battle because of such careless slip ups.

"Now," he said, "tell me what you want, and why you threw those shurikens at me.." With his killing intentions unbridled, Itachi then continued, "Give me a reason to end your pitiful existence, freak..Please.."

He then realised the feeling that he had been holding in during the battle. It was excitement. Such a fight was energising, almost refreshing to him. It was almost...FUN...

* * *

A/N: Thank you for the most recent review. I'll change Yondaime to Sandaime, many apologies on that. Anyways, thank you for reading! Please leave a review! Cheers! 


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